MarchFourth! at Dirty Bourbon

If you dig ecstatic, Burque concert-goers, then tonight, Wednesday February 24, 2016, is your night. The Dirty Bourbon Dance Hall and Saloon (9800 Montgomery NE) hosts a highly listenable show brought to town by forward-looking and far-ranging musical production entity AMP Concerts.

MarchFourth!, a fascinatingly far out, flavorful and funky re-visioning of the American marching band tradition, headlines the event and San Diego Gypsy rockers Diego's Umbrella provides support—albeit it in their own folkified yet punktastic way.

MarchFourth features the talents of 15 musicians and five dancers and acrobats. As a colorful and sometimes cacophonic ensemble, MarchFourth! put a saucy yet postmodern spin on a mainstay of Americana that critics have called sexy, carnivalesque and celebratory. And like all the band geeks you've ever encountered, the marching unit's chops smolder and smother.

Co-conspirators Diego's Umbrella use Eastern European musical conceits mixed up with SoCal punk aesthetics to create a singular musical experience. 18 bucks gets one into this late-winter cosmic carnival; it's a 21+ dealio that begins at 7:30pm.

"Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves." — Stephen Daedalus

Jim Phillips was a musician from Albuquerque. He directed the creative activities of a band called Lousy Robot. When he died unexpectedly last spring, Phillips left behind a body of work notable for defining a fragile, yet brightly expressed nexus of what it means to be human.

Invoking the wide and melodically winsome swath carved out by power-pop adherents like the Easybeats, Big Star, the Cars and Elvis Costello, singer/guitarist Phillips and his ensemble (Ben Wood, keyboards; Joey Gonzales, drums and Dandee Fleming on bass) added intensity and a profound sense of dark realism to their rocanrol stew.

This week, Lousy Robot bassist Fleming reached out to Weekly Alibi to tell about a new collection of recordings by Lousy Robot, available at Bandcamp.

Fleming wrote, "Before his death Jim and the band had been working on collecting outtakes and rarities from previous recording sessions in hopes of putting out a collection of weirdness titled Oddities, Obscurities & Obscenities. The work started with a cover of “Dead Flowers” and an iPhone remix of “Peacocks." During this time, I continued to work on remixes on several other songs. After Jim’s death, I found two songs that the group had demoed but never completed. I edited and restructured those songs and sent them to friend and long-time producer John Dufliho to complete.

The result is a work of complex beauty; the circumstances—rendered as music, hopeful and dire—that make up human life.

A Hawk and a Hacksaw at the Tannex

It is a rare occasion to catch A Hawk and a Hacksaw in their hometown. The duo, composed of accordionist Jeremy Barnes and violinist Heather Trost, each of which take an occasional turn on vocals, stay on the move.

Those of us who were lucky enough to make it into the totally packed Tannex in Barelas on Saturday night were treated to music ripe for day dreaming.

In a word, A Hawk and a Hacksaw is magic. Culling folk songs from across many a diaspora as well as writing their own original pieces, the two created a world entirely separate from 4th Street, from Albuquerque, from this continent.

By the light of white Christmas lights strewn across a heavy rug over the cement floor, the two sang in Greek, spoke little, and played for more than an hour with a sustained intensity that is hard to fathom.

This winter, Barnes and Trost are headed to Europe to play alongside full orchestras and busy street corners while further cultivating their inspiring vision of modern folk.

So, in case you missed it, a few weeks ago the band Whirr said some pretty hateful things on Twitter about trans* people and about the band G.L.O.S.S. (Girls Living Outside Society’s Shit) in particular. Things like “misogyny is hating women. g.l.o.s.s. Is just a bunch of boys running around in panties making shitty music.” In response, their record label dropped them quicker than you can say “transphobia is misogyny, you jerks.” It was one of those rare and gratifying moments of immediate justice being delivered on the internet.

You can listen to G.L.O.S.S.’s EP Demo on their bandcamp. Their queer brand of hardcore is filled with stellar lines like “with lined lips and spiked bats, gonna take femininity back” and “straight America, you will ruin me,” radiating a truly punk ethic of not giving a shit what people think about them.

In the spirit of throwing more light on trans* people in music, here’s a list of five other awesome openly trans* musicians who you should be listening to now. They deserve as much support as they can get—not just because they make good music, but because if we as a society can start not only tolerating but highlighting trans* people in music, then maybe there is hope for us yet.

(Note: below I’ve used the gender pronouns most recently cited as preferred by each artist. If you know better, though, please drop me a line.)

Ok, hopefully you already know about Mykki Blanco—if from nothing else, from her 2012 single “Wavvy” that was playing everywhere for a minute. In addition to her short but prolific music career, Blanco has also made a name for herself as an LGBT activist, performance artist and poet, with the release of her 2011 book From the Silence of Duchamp to the Noise of Boys. Go watch all of her music videos, and then listen to Betty Rubble: The Initiation, her album from earlier this year.

Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons has also had a prolific and varied artistic career. A director and artist, Antony also has one of the most haunting voices in contemporary music. The band is known for tear-jerking baroque-pop ballads like “Hope There’s Someone.” Listen to their self-titled debut album of 2000, then check out some of Antony’s art projects, two of which were listed in SFAQ’s list of “The Top 5 Art Shows in New York City Last Year.”

This punk queercore band from Brooklyn just won Village Voice’s “Best Garage Band of 2015” and it’s well deserved—their music is raw and emotional while still melodic and catchy. In their own words, the quartet plays “sad punk songs about being queer, trans, and black.” You can get their latest EP The Blackest Eyehere.

Mya Byrne is a folk musician and songwriter from Boston. She released her first solo EP in 2004, and has been a staple in the New York folk scene since. She played for the band The Ramblers from 2008 to 2014. You can listen to her first solo LP since her transition in 2014, As I Am, on her website.

Rae Spoon started songwriting and performing in their hometown of Calgary, Alberta, when they were a teenager. Their early music is decidedly down-home folksy, with Spoon playing guitar, banjo and mandolin on albums Throw Some Dirt on Me and Your Trailer Door, but their most recent album My Prairie Home displays some much more slowed-down, orchestral elements. Besides their musical career, Spoon has authored a book of short stories called First Spring Grass Fire, and has collaborated on the book Gender Failure with Ivan E. Coyote.

Sometimes your favorite bands just don't draw a crowd in Albuquerque, for whatever reason, leaving you feeling a bit dispirited about your home town. Thankfully, King Khan & BBQ Show fans didn't stay home last night, though they were a bit tardy, most trickling into Sister during opening band Milk Lines –who played a nice, country-tinged set of psych/rock and roll.

Khan and Mark Sultan (AKA BBQ) came out sans uniforms—to the audible dismay of the packed floor—but it turned out they were simply performing a quick sound check and announced they'd be back after a wardrobe change. And, bam! a nearly naked Khan and a nipple-exposing, body-stockinged BBQ appeared in front of an enthusiastic crowd. The Bad News Boys opened with "Piss Slide", a tune new to me but a concept Khan made Alibi readers familiar with in an interview this week. "Piss Slide, Baby" indeed.

Khan & BBQ proceeded to rock the pants of the crowd for nearly two hours, playing hits like "Waddlin' Around" and "Invisible Girl" with panache and without flaw. Though they didn't play "Animal Party", they did perform one of the sickest tunes in the history of the world, "Taste Buds". Nothing like a crowd singing along to that one. Best show I've seen since Black Lips played Sister. Mark Sultan fairly steals the show with his amazing voice and jiggling nipples, something to be admired considering his partner is one of the more infamous wild-men of contemporary rock and roll. Here's hoping these two make it back to Albuquerque in some capacity, as the King Khan & BBQ Show or with King Khan & The Shrines or BBQ, solo.